Rory Stewart, a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, shakes up Britain’s Tories
[Rory] Stewart has hijacked the Tory leadership campaign with a surprising argument: Britain must reapply its energy to compromise, between its own angry factions and with Europe, and return to Mrs. May’s withdrawal agreement.
This is a frontal challenge to the Tories.
The front-runner for the post, Boris Johnson, has vowed to exit the European Union on Oct. 31, even if no agreement is in place. This promise is tailored to a small audience of Tory hard-liners: It is a quirk of Britain’s democracy that Mrs. May’s replacement will be selected not through primaries but by around 120,000 Conservative Party activists, a group that is older, whiter, more male and more adamant about leaving Europe than the general public. In a survey this year, two-thirds of Tory members said they preferred a no-deal exit to Mrs. May’s withdrawal agreement.
Mr. Stewart, a former environment minister and prisons minister, is trying to blow up that policy, not by warning of the damage it would do, as a string of leaders have for the last three years, but by arguing that it is simply a practical impossibility.
“The battle is to explain to people that ‘no deal’ is a phantasm,” Mr. Stewart said in an interview. “It’s nothing. It’s an absence. It’s a failure to reach a destination. It sounds fine, but it’s not going to get through Parliament.”
His voice comes as a welcome surprise at an angry moment in Britain. He speaks calmly of reconciliation, seemingly impervious to the partisan rancor around him, like Ferdinand the Bull.
“The key word that we need to get back to,” he told the BBC’s “Question Time” on Thursday, “a word that is so powerful, and nobody ever uses in politics, is the word ‘love.’”
Mr. Stewart, 46, is posh, eccentric and clever, precisely, as one journalist wrote this week, the sort of oddball Britons love. [Continue reading…]
And now endorsed by Ken Clarke, “Father of the House of Commons”:
Could not be more proud to have the support of Ken Clarke – one of our greatest chancellors and one of my great political heroes. Thank you so much. pic.twitter.com/C5RVXGFEC5
— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) June 2, 2019